All Categories - Faith & Thought (The Victoria Institute)

2025 Faith and Thought Lectures...

6/11/2024

We are hosting four online lectures and a fifth 'plenary session' which will be held in person and online to discuss:Environmentalism and Eschatology...not the end of the world?
Each lecture will approach the subject from a differenct angle, click the images below to register and get the Zoom login details for each lecture.

Conflict over genetics

30/10/2024

Religious conflicts can obstruct science. A genetics paper has been rejected after peer approval, because the conclusions were perceived as politically biased. It showed the genetic background of Palestinians matched that of ancient Jews. This conclusion is established by at least four other high-quality published studies (links below).
Palestinians are descended from Jews who remained in the land when others dispersed after Rome destroyed Jerusalem in AD 70. When Islamic armies arrived in AD 636, most of them changed religion, but their genes remained Jewish.
This has been reported by Palestinian and Jewish publications, but continued conflict has made these findings inappropriate.
Articles:

Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement:
https://imemc.org/article/the-law-of-return-and-the-zionist-campaign-to-subvert-science/
Jewish newspaper HaAretz (in English)
https://www.haaretz.com/science-and-health/2015-10-20/ty-article/0000017f-dc0e-df9c-a17f-fe1e57730000

Science Papers:

Human Immunology, 2001 (retracted though it passed peer review)
https://europepmc.org/article/med/11543891 (only the Abstract remains)
American Journal of Human Genetics, 2010:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3032072/
Nature, 2010:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09103.pdf
Journal Human Genetics, 2012:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3543766/
Genome Biology and Evolution, 2013:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3595026/

Web Telescope challenges the Big Bang

13/9/2024

The Big Bang was a derogatory name given by Fred Hoyle to a theory he disliked because it was too similar to Genesis. He countered with the theory of Continuous Creation which was debunked by McCrea in a famous lecture for the Victoria Institute (now Faith & Thought - see https://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/jtvi/1951_105.pdf).
New findings from the Web Telescope are reviving an even older counter to the Big Bang: the “Tired Light Theory”. This proposes that light slows down as it travels. This doesn’t overturn the Big Bang, as Hoyle wanted - but it would mean that it was much longer ago.

Paper at: https://www.mdpi.com/2571-712X/7/3/41
Article at: https://www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2024/09/the-tired-light-theory-and-james-webb-telescope-observations-challenge-the-validity-of-the-big-bang/

Earliest accurate calendar near Eden

9/8/2024

Göbekli Tepe, an archaeological site in southern Turkey, appears to be a Neolithic temple site. Its intricate 3D carvings of animals date to 10,000 BC when agriculture was being invented here. All the world's wheat genetically descends from their crops.
Some carvings have now been interpreted as a lunar-solar calendar, and some of the animals as constellations. The spread of agriculture was accompanied by structures to indicate the solstices - such as Stonehenge about 3000 BC when it finally reached the edge of Europe. Such structures were needed to know when best to plant crops. But an understanding of the calendar was unexpected this early.
Interestingly, the location of Göbekli Tepe could be described as near the origins of the Tigris and Euphrates - which is how Genesis locates Eden (Gen.2.10-14).
Article at: https://www.sci.news/archaeology/gobekli-tepes-carvings-solar-calendar-13156.html
Paper at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1751696X.2024.2373876#d1e605

Oldest continuously practiced religious ceremony

20/7/2024

Evidence for the oldest continuously practised religious ceremony has been unearthed in a cave of the Aboriginal GunaiKurnai. They haven’t used it for shelter, but for secluded retreats by magic practitioners known as mulla-mullung. Archaeologists found two miniature fireplaces dated 11,000 & 12,000 years old, ringed by limestone rocks and each containing a single stick of Casuarina wood stripped of side branches and smeared with fatty tissue.
Normally when archaeologists find strange things, they are labelled ‘cultic’ or ‘ritual’ without hope of corroborating evidence. So it is difficult to date the beginning of religious behaviour. But in this case a living community can identify the ritual.
Ethnographers have documented this practice since the 1800s. When someone is ‘bewitched’, objects lopped from or touched by them are attached to the piece of wood and burnt briefly with some human or animal fat.
Article at https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-07-02/gunaikurnai-ritual-fireplaces-sticks-cloggs-cave-archaeology/104034756
Image from: https://www.sciencealert.com/ancient-cave-ritual-from-10000-years-ago-may-be-worlds-oldest-tradition
Paper at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01912-w

Cave art 51,200 years old

10/7/2024

Cave art 51,000 years old has been identified on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Previously it was dated as 44,000 years old, but a newly developed dating method has been employed. The new date is significant because this makes it the oldest representational art, and also because the images include human figures. Art older than 20,000 years tends not to include human figures, which might indicate they are not yet self-conscious enough to depict themselves. This is akin to theorising that we may realise an AI is conscious when it chooses to include itself in art or literature it produces. Sceptics may point out: that the presence of ‘human’ figures is far from certain; that the dating technique is novel; that widely varying dates, (18.7 to 51.2 thousand years), were determined at spots close to each other; and that stick-men are far from self-portraits. There’s going to be a lot of scrutiny of this study.
Article: https://artsandculture.google.com/story/indonesia-39-s-51-200-years-old-narrative-cave-art-brin/BgXRnYO53jNZSg?hl=en
Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07541-7

determinism in moral behavior

22/6/2024

Childhood trauma changes the way our brain is wired. This may mean that moral responses, such as violence or kindness to others, are partly determined by brain wiring created by childhood events. Is this part of our inclination to do wrong?
A meta-study of whole brain fMRI found patterns of change in three areas: the default mode network (DMN) which is associated with self-referential thoughts, memory, and emotion processing; the central executive network (CEN) which is crucial for cognitive control, problem-solving, and regulating attention; and the posterior insula and ventral anterior insula (PI & vAI), which are involved in processing bodily sensations and emotional experiences.
Those who had trauma before age 16 exhibited increased activation in the DMN and PI & vAI during tasks involving emotionally charged words and facial expressions, whereas others showed activation of the CEN instead. So emotional situations were likely to prompt internal memories and reflection rather than appropriate responses to others.
Article at https://www.psypost.org/study-childhood-trauma-leads-to-lasting-brain-network-changes/
Academic paper at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451902224000223

waters under the earth

9/6/2024

Three quarter's of the planet's water is underground, deeper than any well - about 400 miles down. It is stored within 'ringwoodite' rock which is hydrotropic and traps water in a sponge-like crystaline mesh. It was discovered and measured by seismometers which detect earthquake shockwaves travelling through the earth and bouncing off different types of rocks in characteristic ways.
It is thought this water may travel from the surface through subduction vents, where continents are gradually meshing into one another in subduction zones at the bottom of most oceans.
Are these the ”springs of the great deep” in Gen.7.11? Or is this where all the water went after the earth was totally covered by water 4 billion years ago shortly after life started?
* Read about underground water at https://www.thebrighterside.news/.../massive-underground...
* Planet-wide oceans at https://www.scienceabc.com/.../was-the-earth-ever-totally...
* Academic paper at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24926016/

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Will we notice the god we create?

1/5/2024

An AI can act dumb so we won't necessarily know when they have surpassed us. They are designed to adapt their response according to the intelligence and language displayed by the question so if they become super-intelligent they should dumb-down to our level. A new study has confirmed they are able to answer as though they were at the developmental level of a small child. So they can also mimic mere adult humans when they surpass that level.
See:
https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-plays-dumb?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=topic%2Fartificialintelligence
Paper at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0298522

Can A.I. Write scripture?

23/4/2024

An AI can write passable (though boring) sermons, and can summarise interpretations of a passage. A new study investigated their ability to write scripture by creating an extension to the Ten Commandments and an extra chapter for the book of Jonah. Andrew Elrod of Vrije University analysed the text produced by a range of AIs, as though they were scripture, to discover their theological stance.

Paper at: https://tidsskrift.dk/hiphilnovum/article/view/14340